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Her first works of poetry were the chapbooks An Exquisite Navel, A Passing Dragon, and A Passing Dragon Seen Again, published in 1959. Several of her poems also appeared in Beat and Beatific II in 1959.

Although Kandel was born in New York, her family lived in Bucks County, Pennsylvania during her childhood. Afterward, she moved to Los Angeles to live with her father, screenwriter Aben Kandel. She returned to New York to attend The New School for Social Research on scholarship for three and a half years before she dropped out. She moved to San Francisco in 1960. She began living in the East-West House co-op where she met Jack Kerouac, who later immortalized her as Romana Swartz, "a big Rumanian monster beauty," in his novel Big Sur (1962). In the novel, she is described as being the girlfriend of Dave Wain, who was based on Lew Welch. "Dave" describes how she walked around the "Zen-East House" (East-West House) wearing only purple panties. Kerouac described her as "intelligent, well read, writes poetry, is a Zen student, knows everything [...]" (Big Sur, p. 75).

Kandel was briefly notorious as the author of a short book of poetry, The Love Book. A small pamphlet consisting of four poems, The Love Book provoked censorship with its three-part poem, "To Fuck with Love." Police seized the work as being in violation of state obscenity codes, from both City Lights Books and The Psychedelic Shop in 1966. Subsequently Kandel gained cause célèbre status.[1] She herself defended her verse as "holy erotica."[2] A jury declared the book obscene and lacking in any redeeming social value in 1967 and sales increased; Kandel thanked the police by giving one percent of all profits to the Police Retirement Association.[2] The decision was overturned on appeal and the book continued to sell well.[2]

In 1964, she was asked to read at the University of California Poetry Conference organized by Charles Olson. Along with Allen Ginsberg, Timothy Leary, Michael McClure and others, Kandel was a speaker at the Human Be-In in the Golden Gate Park polo fields on January 14, 1967. The only woman to speak from the stage, Kandel defiantly read from The Love Book. It was her 35th birthday, and McClure later stated, "The entire crowd of 20,000 or 30,000 people sang 'Happy Birthday' to her."[3]

Kandel published her only full-length book of poems, Word Alchemy, in 1967. She was one of 15 people interviewed in Voices from the Love Generation (Little, Brown and Company, 1968). In 1976, Kandel recited a poem at the iconic concert The Last Waltz performed by The Band (but was not included in the film or soundtrack).[4]

In 1970, Kandel suffered massive spinal injuries in a motorcycle crash with her then-husband Billy "Sweet Wiliam" Fritsch (poet and member of the Hells Angels). Despite having to cope with excruciating pain for the remainder of her life, she continued to write and maintain social ties.

She died at home on October 18, 2009, of complications from lung cancer, with which she had been diagnosed several weeks earlier.[5]

In 2012 Collected Poems of Lenore Kandel was published. It features 80 of her poems, many of which had never before been published.[6][7]